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Last week we had a look at two things about grace, what it isn’t (Grace is not a Thing) and what it is (Grace is Christ and Him Crucified) and that inevitable leads us to the question of faith. ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith’ (Eph. 2:8) – the two go hand in hand. But, having seen what grace is, that helps us see what faith is too. For, like grace, faith is not a thing.

Some people want to make faith a thing that saves. So, they might talk about God electing us based on our foreseen faith. Or they might talk about our faith being counted for righteousness in justification (as opposed to the imputation of Christ’s righteousness). But in both those cases faith becomes a saving thing. If God elects us based on foreseen faith, then faith has somehow become a merit in us. If my faith is counted for righteousness, rather than Christ’s perfect obedience, then again, faith has somehow become a way of meriting salvation. And if faith were a thing in us that merited salvation, that would mean that salvation was down to something in us, rather than the grace of God.

Now, if we have a vague notion of what grace is, that might sound alright. If grace were simply God’s niceness, then that sort of grace could go together with faith as a thing. But (as we saw last week), grace isn’t a vague niceness. Grace isn’t even simply God’s favour. Grace is Christ and Him crucified. And so, if we’re saved by grace through faith, that means we’re saved by Christ crucified through faith. And that helps us see a lot better the true nature of faith. For faith cannot be anything that adds to what Christ has done; no, faith is simply the manner in which we lay hold on Christ and Him crucified.

On the way out the door after the
Breaking of Bread yesterday, someone caught me just to say that they had felt
like they were in heaven during the worship. And that’s a good thing, because
that’s what the worship of the church is – a foretaste of heaven. The book of
Hebrews puts it like this:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23 to
the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the
spirits of just men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the
Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better
things than that of Abel.
(Heb. 12:22-24)

As we gather together as the
church in worship, we draw near into the presence of the living God. Here we
read that it’s not simply that God comes down and gives us a glimpse of His
presence. No, He lifts us up into His heavenly throne room (for that’s the only
way that we could be worshipping in the presence of ‘an innumerable company of angels’ and ‘the spirits of just men made perfect’). In fact, when we worship
in the UK, we worship along with those in Malawi, Belgium, South Korea, Chile,
and the rest of the world, for we come ‘to
the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven’.
We join with the church around the world and throughout the ages as we worship,
for our God lifts us all up into His heavenly presence.

At the end of Exodus 4 something rather curious happens.
Moses and Aaron speak to the elders of Israel, and then they and the elders
speak to the people. Now, it’s not speaking to the elders or speaking to the
people that’s curious, but rather what happens when they speak to the people,
for ‘when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of
Israel and that He had looked on their affliction, then they bowed their heads
and worshiped’ (Ex. 4:31). What’s curious about that? Not the bowing and
worshipping, but the fact that it says that ‘the LORD had visited the children
of Israel.’ You see, the LORD (the Angel of the LORD, so God the Son) had only
appeared to one person – Moses. Jesus had met with Moses in the burning bush.
The LORD had met with Moses, but the text says the LORD had visited the
children of Israel.

Now, the people hear about this after Moses and Aaron speak
to the elders. So it’s talking about the LORD meeting with the elders. Yet when
we read about that meeting between Moses, Aaron and the elders, we don’t read
about any burning bushes or any other appearances of the Angel of the LORD.
Moses is the only one who’s seen Him, and yet the people hear He’s met with the
elders. How can that be?

Yesterday we saw that grace isn’t a thing, and we saw that
grace isn’t a principle. So then, what is grace? Titus 2:11 tells us that ‘the grace of God that brings salvation has
appeared’. So grace has made an appearance. Grace was visible. But when?
How? Paul gives us an answer to that question in 2 Timothy 1:9-10 where he
writes that God:

has saved us
and called us with a
holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and
grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, but
has now been revealed by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and
brought life and immortality to light through the gospel

The grace by which we’re saved was revealed by the appearing of Christ and through the Cross of Christ. It’s the same grace that was given to us ‘before time began’. But even then it was given to us ‘in Christ’. Grace isn’t given BY Christ, but IN Christ. Grace isn’t revealed by His teaching and example, but in His Person and His Work, in His Incarnation and Atonement!

What!? How can I say there’s no such THING as grace? Well,
calm down a second. I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as grace, but
that there’s no such THING as grace. Yes, grace exists. But grace isn’t a
thing.

Now there are some people who think of grace as a thing.
Some people think that grace is a substance that God pours out into our hearts,
so it’s a thing. Others think of it as help from God, so that’s a thing. And
yet others think of grace as a power God gives, so that’s a thing too.

But hold on. There’s a big problem with thinking of grace
like that. For, you see, if grace is a substance, then our salvation depends on
our receptivity of the substance. Salvation becomes about how much of this
thing called grace we’ve managed to get. If grace is help, well help can’t ever
do everything (otherwise it wouldn’t be help!), and so we must bring some
contribution to the equation. If grace is a power, then our response to this
power in our lives becomes the important factor. So, if grace were a thing, then
it would all boil down to us; what are we going to do with this grace for salvation?

And that’s how many people think. They think that God gives
us something called grace to enable us to live for Him and serve Him. But that
puts us in the drivers’ seat; it’s all about us and how we respond. It’s all
about our cooperation with grace. So in that case, salvation wouldn’t be by grace alone, but by grace and our
cooperation with grace. It wouldn’t be by
faith alone, but by our living for God. It wouldn’t be in Christ alone, but in Christ plus what we
do with Him! If grace were a thing, salvation would depend on something in us,
and that would undo the ‘It is finished’
of the Cross.

Welcome to, what I hope will be, an occasional series
attempting to break down some of the myths that have grown up about
Pentecostalism. And to get the ball
rolling lets dispel that myth that Pentecostals are all Arminians. When I first
met a good friend of the Reformed persuasion, and he found out I was a
Pentecostal, his first reaction was something along the lines of ‘Oooh, an
Arminian!’ And that’s not the only time it’s happened. Now, it’s true, there
are many Arminian Pentecostals. There are even whole denominations of Arminian
Pentecostals in some countries. And, undoubtedly, that’s where the myth has
come from, for the big Pentecostal denominations in the United States tend to
be Arminian. In fact, in America they have what they call Holiness
Pentecostalism, which comes out of the Wesleyan tradition (and Wesleyanism is a
form of Arminianism). One of the first, and most influential, books on
Pentecostal origins and theology, Dayton’s Theological
Roots of Pentecostalism, concentrates on this Wesleyan branch of the
movement in America, and so, as a result, Pentecostals in many countries which
have no comparable movement, have read a Wesleyan Arminianism that was never
there back into their own origins.

British Pentecostalism differs from its American counterpart
in many ways, and this is no exception. None of the three main British
Pentecostal movements take an officially Arminian doctrinal stance. Nor do they
take an officially Calvinist stance. And all three have had prominent ministers
of a Calvinistic persuasion.

Of course, I’m most familiar with the situation in the
Apostolic Church. In the early days of the movement Calvinism and Arminianism
weren’t discussed as wholesale positions, but various doctrines which played
major roles in either the Calvinist or Arminian scheme were. (Incidentally, the
lack of Calvinist/Arminian binary debate highlights the fact that, although they’re
the more common positions in the English-speaking world, they aren’t the only
two alternatives. Lutheranism is a fully Protestant position which is neither
Calvinist nor Arminian.) So let me just touch briefly on some of these.

Once, many moons ago and in a land (relatively) far away, I preached a sermon on the second half of 2 Corinthians 5. I spoke about Christ taking our sin and clothing us with His righteousness. I spoke about how Christ reconciled us to Himself through His sacrifice on the Cross. I spoke about being a new creation. And I spoke about us being Christ’s ambassadors in taking His Good News to others. You know, the stuff that’s in the text! Well, the next day I got a long email from the worship leader of the church where I had been preaching. Although it was long, the point boiled down to this:

‘Why’d you waste so much time telling us about the cross and salvation? We’re Christians, so we already know that and don’t need to hear it again! You should have used the time to expand on the evangelism bit – that’s the point of what the text was telling us to do.’

I'm busy with quite a bit of academic work today, and it all hinges on perichoresis. So, rather than leave you Wednesday word-less, I thought I'd give you perichoresis as well (extracted from the middle of a rather long post from last year about another subject entirely).

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are perfectly united in purpose and action. They're not three gods, each independently getting on with they're own agendas. No; Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God with One plan, unitedly acting together in love.

Theologians have come up with the word perichoresis (or coinherence, as theologians are good at coming up with big words, but not always good at agreeing which big word to use for the same thing) to explain how this can be, that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all fully involved in one another's works.

Perichoresis means that there is a mutual indwelling of the Persons of the Godhead. Jesus speaks of this in John's gospel:

Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.(John 5:19)

He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves. (John 14:9-11)

Today’s a bit of an odd day. In fact, there hasn’t been one like it for 598 years. That’s when Gregory XII resigned, on 4th July, 1415. Gregory, however, resigned to bring an end to the Western Schism (Although the Western Schism is also sometimes called the Great Schism, it’s not the same as the Great Schism between the Western church and Eastern Orthodoxy, which seems to have confused some journalists today.) Benedict is resigning for a very different reason indeed. That’s why it’s such a shock. Although Canon Law allows a Pope to resign due to health or old age, it’s never happened before and so didn’t seem likely ever to happen – until today.

Already speculation has started about the papabile (even though it isn’t all that long until Easter, by which time all that speculation will have come to an end). Twitter is awash with papal news. And it’s interestingly odd to see so many Protestants opine on who the cardinal electors should elect to the Petrine office.

And in between the papal tweets, I see things tweets on such subjects as the place of small groups in your church strategy or the latest worship album. Now, I’m no Roman Catholic, and I don’t mean to disparage small groups, strategies or worship albums, but somehow the resignation of a Pope highlights just how ephemeral the things we evangelicals get excited about can be. A small group or strategy may last a few years, a worship album nowadays will likely be forgotten in six months, but the nature of the Church of Jesus Christ and its government endure. (Not that I'm equating the papacy with the government of Christ's Church - far from it!)

The Eucharist, Communion, Lord's Supper, Breaking of Bread: they're all different ways of talking about the same thing and so they're all this Wednesday's Wednesday Word. (I would have put them all in the title, but it would have been a bit long!) It's a meal that Jesus instituted for His disciples involving prayer, Christ's words, breaking the bread, and the giving and eating of bread and wine. That's clear enough as we do it each Lord's Day morning. But what are we doing when we come to the Table? What sort of meal is it?

1.) A Commemoration

When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper he told His disciples to do it 'in remembrance of me' (1 Cor. 11:24-25). So when we come to the table, we look to Christ and what He has done to save us in the breaking of His body and pouring our of His blood in His atoning death on the cross. The sacrament keeps us grounded in what's most important: Christ and Him crucified. So in the breaking of bread we look back to the Cross.

Martin Luther had some concerns about worship. He wasn't happy with what corporate worship had become in his day, and so for him the Reformation needed to include a reform of worship, not just of doctrine. You see the two go hand in hand. What we believe has an effect on how we worship, and the way we worship will, in the long run, have an effect on what we believe.

Luther was combating works-righteousness - the idea that you could contribute to your salvation by your good works. Luther saw in the Scriptures that 'the just shall live by faith' (Rom 1:17), that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone, 'not by works lest any man should boast' (Eph 2:8-9). And so Luther responded by preaching the Gospel of justification by faith alone as a result of Christ's saving work alone.

But that wasn't enough. It was one thing to preach the Gospel, but if the way the church worshipped continued to reinforce the old false teaching of works-righteousness, then the people would be getting contradictory messages. Worship needed to be reformed too.